The Powers That Be
by JCRobin
Summary: An average day in the life of Wanda Maximoff. One-shot.


The Powers That Be

7:00am.

Wanda wakes up.

An alarm doesn't wake her. It was the lamp by her bed. It's on. It's on every morning. Right at seven. It's been happening like that ever since she first got her powers as a little girl. She made the lamp turn on with her mind. It even happened in the mental institution when there were no lamps. Just cold, bright florescent.

_Carousels. Picnics. Ice cream. Fireworks._

She shakes her head. What was she just thinking about? Yes, picnics. She hasn't seen her father in a long time and she wants to picnic with him. Maybe he'll drop by and they'll go and they can ride the carousel in the park like they did when she was little.

She swings her legs over the side of the bed and stands up, stretching. She didn't get as much sleep as she would've liked. Wanda really likes sleep and she really _doesn't _like it when the boys keep her up. They were laughing and screaming down in the living room. Playing games. She will hex someone into a wall this morning. Maybe. She doesn't hex as much since the last time she saw her father and that strange monkey-like man.

Wanda throws on her same clothes. The red top and tight black pants. They feel good and familiar to her. In a house as crazy as the Boarding House, it was good to have something familiar. She walks into the hallway. It is full of flies and the whole place is buzzing and humming. As many flies as Todd ate, he never ate enough to stop the buzzing, even in the wintertime.

7:13am.

Wanda brushes her teeth.

Her reflection makes her sad. The haircut reminds her of..._Carousels. Picnics. Ice cream. Fireworks. _She smiles. She's such a pretty girl.

"Hey, don't hog the bathroom. There're three other people in this house, you know."

Her brother is in the doorway. She smiles at him. He seems upset by her smile but quickly, very, very, very quickly, he smiles back.

"Uh, you...hungry? Lance got us pancakes. Don't ask me how he did it; guy can steal anything. But, you gotta hurry, Fred's already down there."

"Ok." Wanda walks down the stairs. Pietro shuts the bathroom door. He'll be in there for an hour.

7:30am

Wanda eats breakfast.

Lance is a genius. He didn't just steal pancakes. He stole syrup and butter and milk. She watches as Freddy stuffs pancake after pancake into his chubby cheeks. Freddy eats like a two-year-old. A giant, fat two-year-old. Wanda is afraid the food will run out. But it never does. If it really gets bad, Wanda just ups the probability of there being more food and there is. She's very proud of that trick. She's gotten very good at it. Lance is the real magician, though. His powers don't even have to do with making things and yet he always conjures up breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. Sometimes, the power goes out because no one has paid the bills and the water gets turned off because they can't afford to keep it on. But Lance always gets food.

The pancakes are warm and soft in her mouth. And familiar. Lance steals pancakes a lot. It's his favorite breakfast food. She likes pancakes too. She won't hex Lance into a wall today. Toad would be a good choice to hex. He is squishing flies into his pancakes. They look like blueberries. Lance tells Todd that's gross. Todd holds out his long, gross, green tongue and it's covered in flies like a strip of flypaper. Wanda doesn't feel like eating now.

9:02am

Mystique shows up.

She takes Wanda into the living room and shoos the boys out. They aren't happy but they leave. Mystique talks to Wanda. She talks to her almost every day. It's very important that Wanda is happy. Wanda's father is the boss. Wanda is the most powerful mutant on the planet. Of _course _it's important that Wanda's happy.

Mystique asks how Wanda's powers have been. Wanda frowns. She tells Mystique about the lamp. Wanda likes the light. But she doesn't like it when her powers work without her. Mystique smiles. Wanda hates Mystique's smile. It always looks like she knows something that she won't tell Wanda. Like a really good joke or that Wanda has something in her teeth. Wanda asks to see Agatha again. She feels better about her powers when Agatha is there. Mystique's mysterious smile gets wider. Wanda wants to hex her grin off. Wanda smiles at the thought of Mystique without her mouth. Mystique uses her mouth to tell Wanda that she can arrange a meeting with Agatha. Even today. Wanda nods. She would like that.

12:22pm

Wanda eats lunch.

Lance has found them sloppy joes. Wanda likes to think that Lance can pull food out of empty space. She asks Lance if he can do this. Lance laughs. He laughs nervously. It's very important that Wanda is happy since she can crush his head with a wink of her eye. No, he can only make the ground shake.

"What, are you stupid?" Pietro asks her. Pietro is the only one that can talk to her that way. She lets him because he is her twin. But she only lets him get away with so much.

"Watch it, 'Tro!" The blue aura around her grows. The other boys have stopped talking. Lance pretends like he doesn't see what's happening. Freddy watches and food falls from his open mouth onto the edge of the table. Todd is laughing. He knows that Pietro is in trouble.

"Easy! Did I say 'stupid'? I didn't say 'stupid! You musta heard me wrong." Pietro smiles. Wanda pulls back. She wasn't really going to hurt him. He's never done anything wrong to her. He never watched as she was dragged away into the cold, lonely...

_Carousels. Picnics. Ice Cream. Fireworks.  
_

Wanda smiles. "Pietro, can we see father?"

Pietro's face is blank. Todd is quiet, curious. The flies buzz. "What would you want to see him for?"

"I miss him."

Mystique is there. She puts a hand on Wanda's shoulder. Mystique can shape shift into shadows and chairs and the walls. Wanda is sure of it. She is fairly certain she has brushed her teeth with Mystique.

Mystique says that she will ask Wanda's father to drop by. Mystique wears her smile like one of her shifts; she gets the outside perfect but she misses the soul.

This is good news though. Wanda begs Mystique to bring her father. Mystique will try. She leaves. Freddy pipes up. He is eating again and talking around chili and bread. It is gross. Freddy says that Wanda's dad shouldn't come today. They have to fight the X-Men this afternoon. They need Wanda.

3:04pm

The X-Men show up.

Sometimes, they fight the X-Men at night. But it's rare. Very rare. Most of the time, they fight the X-Men in the afternoon. Right after school lets out. Wanda would like to go after them while they're in school but Mystique says it's a bad idea.

The X-Men stand right on the edge of the Brotherhood house. They're afraid to get too close to the house. Wanda is very protective of the house. They stand just outside like there's a fence to keep them out. Lance and Scott start yelling at each other. They always start things off. Wanda watches. She has a protective aura up. She will decide when she gets involved in the fight and no one will hurt her. She will do the hurting.

Todd is making threats at Kurt. Kurt yells back at him and gets harder and harder to understand the angrier he gets. Rogue hangs back and watches from behind her hair. Wanda doesn't like her. Pietro says that Rogue used to be one of us, but now she is with _them_. She's one of the "successes" for Xavier. She remembers Xavier.

_Carousels. Picnics. Ice--  
_

No. She remembers is a nice man. A bald, weak, frail-looking man in a wheelchair. He has a good voice. She doesn't remember where she's seen him. The place he was in is blurry and looks like bricks and a park and her father's smiling face but Xavier is clear.

Someone, the tiny, annoying brunette who she never remembers the name of, throws something at her head. A rock. It connects on Wanda's forehead and knocks her down. Blood runs in Wanda's eye. Wanda touches the cut and sees the blood on her hand. Wanda doesn't understand. She had a protective aura up.

Toad is at her side and he is trying to help her up. She is staring at her hand. It is her blood. The blue aura around her is gone. Her eyes feel like they're going to pop out of her skull. The X-Men are running away. No one looks back at her as they run away. There are bars there. Between the X-Men running and the Brotherhood on the grass. Wanda pushes Toad aside and runs to the bars. She grabs them and shakes them. They are firm and real and black. She screams at the bars. She screams and screams and screams.

3:45pm

Wanda is sedated.

Erik Leshner shakes his head. They were making such progress with Wanda.

If Jason Wyngarde wasn't so damn expensive he would get her another session. Erik watches as his daughter is dragged back to her room from the exercise yard. A male, brunette orderly looks near tears as he pulls her, Wanda's feet scraping across the floor. Erik feels like crying, too. He feels alone in the institute's hallways, the only company the buzzing of the florescent lights. He can hear Dr. Charles Xavier's wheelchair against the tile floors. As much as he wants to scream at the good doctor, he can't. Not at his old friend.

"When is she going to get better?" Erik asks, looking through the interior window as they lay Wanda in her bed.

"It takes time, Erik." Xavier said. "Dr. Darkholme says Wanda has asked to see Dr. Agatha Harkness again."

Erik snorted, "Because she plays into her fantasy."

"Yes." Dr. Xavier rolled towards the exit. Erik took one last look at his daughter and followed. "Your daughter can't cope with this real world. She feels powerless here where everything is planned and chosen for her. So, she invented a world where she has all the power. A place where everyone has special gifts and magical powers and where she is the most powerful of all. When her fantasy is rejected...well, like what happened today in the exercise yard, for instance. When it's proven that she's just like everyone else and there are no such things as, what she calls 'mutant gifts', she just can't handle it."

Erik walks past the kid that eats bugs and the fat kid. They are her only friends inside these walls and probably inside her head, too. "Well, it's those damn high schoolers that set her off! Can't you do something about them? Push back yard time or file a complaint or use a chainlink fence instead of those awful black bars!" Erik's fists were balled up. "The way they pick on her. Charles, she's been through a lot today..can you...can you just let me see her. Let me talk to her."

"I don't think that would be a good idea." Xavier stopped by the exit. "She's still adjusting." He paused. "And...I'm afraid she hasn't stopped talking to Pietro as we'd hoped. In fact, she talks to him now more than ever. Dr. Wyngarde made it a positive thing for her. In a way, that shows she's getting worse."

Erik bites back his tears. He feels a sting in his heart at the mention of Wanda's dead twin. Stillborn. She still talks to him like some sort of imaginary friend. Her old womb-mate. Erik sometimes shames himself by thinking that Wanda's sanity died in Pietro. He nods at Charles. He trusts him. He had no choice but to. "Can I come back tomorrow, Charles?"

Of course. We'll try again first thing in the morning. The lights turn on at seven am sharp."

"As always." Erik shook Dr. Charles Xavier's hand. He walked down the steps and out to his car in the parking lot, passing those horrible black bars that kept his daughter from the gray, boring, but rational world outside. He looked back at the building, for Wanda's window. He knew it by heart. He'd been looking for her in that window since she was eight. But she wasn't in it. She never was. Instead he looked at the sign below it. Right in the center of the building and above the exit. He always ended up looking at the sign and it haunted his mind's eye on the long drive home. In big bold letters it stated: THE XAVIER INSTITUTE FOR MENTALLY DISTURBED YOUNGSTERS.

Erik shuddered and got in the car. Tomorrow. He'd try again tomorrow.

* * *

This was done for The Brotherhood Club on Deviantart's "Twisted Tales" contest. You can find a link to The Brotherhood Club in my profile if you want to see the other entries or check out the coolest club on DA. A big "thank you" to my sister to helping me come up with this idea and for proof reading it. Hope you enjoyed it!


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